But it doesn’t matter to me. One method makes me so miserably hungry 24/7 that I quit after a few weeks of agony, the other makes me forget all about food entirely.

This seems to bother people, who always tell me to do it the “right” way, which to them apparently means using willpower to endure endless suffering.

That's fine, you can live in your world of magic. I don't care for intermittent fasting, it been easier for me to calorie count, but both of our systems are CI/CO. If we can acknowledge the core concept is that weight loss is done through caloric restriction we can then expand that to more implementations, because, as you've pointed out, the "right" way is very personal.

No one in this thread cares about this being the "right" way, they care about being accurate in what we're discussing.

Intermittent fasting, keto, carnivore, sugar diet, etc., all work when they work because it is caloric restriction.